


Frequently a Fool

by goldarrow



Series: Animal Clan AU [1]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Sort of AU, Strange things beyond the anomalies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 02:04:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20399884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldarrow/pseuds/goldarrow
Summary: Nick found out about Helen and Stephen much earlier, and the result isn't happy.Then they both find out what happened to Helen - and the results are even worse.





	Frequently a Fool

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Anyone and anything recognisable as from Primeval belongs to Impossible Pictures. I mean no harm, I make no profit except satisfaction. I promise to return everyone in pristine condition once I’m done with them.

Stephen Hart flinched back, spilling coffee down the front of his shirt as his PhD advisor, Professor Nick Cutter, slapped both hands down hard on the table right in front of him.

"Bloody hell, Professor!" he exclaimed, attempting without conspicuous success to wipe the hot coffee from his shirt and chest before it raised blisters. "What's wrong?"

"Were you ever planning on telling me?" Cutter's face was red and his voice was rough and louder than Stephen had ever heard it. Normally when Professor Cutter was angry, his voice got very quiet, frighteningly so to those who didn't know him. This was both unusual and unsettling.

"Telling you what?" Stephen asked, having a nasty feeling where this was going but fighting a no doubt futile rear guard action in the hopes he was wrong. He glanced around the coffee shop, seeing no customers at this late hour, only the barista eyeing them with trepidation but not quite looking as if she was about to call the police.

"Don't play word games. And don't pretend you don't know exactly what this is about, damn it." Cutter's tone was as sharp as his name, and Stephen died a little inside. 

Stephen sighed and pushed the palaeontology journal he'd been using to verify references in off to the side. "Professor," he said quietly, wiping a hand down his face, "I'm often a fool, so I'm afraid you're going to have to tell me what it is I should be apologising for this time."

"Good God." Cutter collapsed into the chair across from him and stared, blue eyes intent, still furious but perhaps a little calmer. "I honestly don't know what you could consider to be anything more foolish than bedding your PhD advisor."

"Damn it," Stephen muttered, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Professor, I . . . " He dropped his hands to the table in front of him and stared at them, unable to meet Cutter's gaze. “How did you find out?” 

“I found a photograph tucked into an old album. The position and the expressions on your faces were - revealing.”

Stephen shuddered. He thought he’d tossed that picture. It seemed that Helen had found and kept it. “What did you do with it?”

“I threw the fucking thing away,” Cutter snarled. “Why would I want to keep something like that in my house?”

Stephen sighed. Now came the moment of truth. He didn't know how much Cutter cared about his wife, but based on Cutter’s reaction so far it wasn’t looking good for him. Stephen was about to take his degree in his hands and maybe even throw it out the closest window. "For my future," he said softly.

Cutter sat back and stared at him, Stephen could feel the sharp gaze doing its best to dissect him. "You'd better come up with an explanation for that statement, Stephen. Cryptic utterances have never been a great love of mine."

"It was last year, in the spring, not long before she disappeared. She told me she wouldn't be able to recommend me for Dr Patterson's team for the summer dig if I didn't prove my loyalty."

"Bull. Shit." Cutter growled, almost leaping to his feet.

Stephen had to exert every bit of control he had to avoid cringing back as the professor loomed over him. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't know what to do." He gave a fleeting glance at the irate man facing him. "I admired her. So much. She was so passionate. So sure of herself. I guess . . . I just told myself that she knew what she was doing. I'm so sorry."

Picking up his now almost cold coffee, he turned the cup around in his fingers, concentrating on the letters as they slid like a moving banner across his vision. He could feel the weight of Cutter's gaze on him, assessing, judging, finding him wanting. Blowing out the breath he'd been unconsciously holding, he made himself relax back into his chair. "I'll talk to the dean tomorrow," he said softly. "I'll transfer to a different program."

Cutter snarled. "And what will that say about you, and me?" he asked sharply. "My wife goes missing, you transfer to my advisorship, and then you walk away from that, too?" He shook his head. "No, Stephen, you don't get away from this." Standing up, he gestured to the door. "Come with me. We have a lot to work out."

Taking a deep breath and his courage in his hands, Stephen followed.

The next couple of days were very difficult for both men. Cutter still seemed incredibly angry. They were barely speaking, and when they did Cutter's words were sharp and seemed deliberately designed to hurt. Every hour Stephen expected that Cutter would change his mind and throw Stephen out on his ear. But every hour he didn't, and Stephen couldn't work out why. 

Or he couldn’t until he glanced up and caught the edge of a calculating expression on Cutter's face before the other man wiped it. That was when the penny dropped. Cutter actually thought that Stephen might have had something to do with Helen's disappearance. Whether as perpetrator or as conspirator, he didn't know, but Cutter had to be subscribing to the philosophy of "keep your friends close and your enemies closer". 

Reckoning he really had nothing to lose, Stephen sighed and closed down his computer. Turning to Cutter, he stared straight at him. "I don't know a damned thing about Helen's disappearance," he stated baldly. "In fact, I don't know a damned thing about her, really, only the part of her that she showed us, her students. The last time I spoke to her she said she'd found something in the Forest of Dean that was going to turn the paleontological world onto its ear." He stood up and paced over to the window and stared out, unable to face Cutter's sardonic expression any longer. "I didn't believe her.” He shrugged. “By then I was pretty soured on her, honestly. Not enough to do anything about it," he added hurriedly when he heard Cutter's strangled exclamation, "but I didn't want to be sucked any further into her ideas." Taking his courage in his hands, he turned back to the other man and made his suggestion. "The Forest of Dean is where it started, and where she disappeared. Maybe there's something there that can tell us what happened."

"What can we find that the police didn't? They're trained for this type of investigation and we're not. Besides, you just said you don't care," Cutter replied, eyeing him critically, and Stephen sighed.

"I don't. Not about her. But I do care about my future. I don't want this hanging over my head forever, and if I can find some answers then I'm willing to try. Besides, they were looking for evidence of foul play. We'll be looking for whatever it was Helen found."

Cutter stared at him, conflicting thoughts running visibly behind his pale blue eyes. "All right. We go to the Forest of Dean tomorrow morning. Go home, rest. Meet me back here at 8am."

Stephen nodded and left without another word.

The drive to the Forest was one of the most uncomfortable experiences of Stephen's life. The two days of what had amounted to verbal harassment from Cutter paled into insignificance beside the icy silence he was now being subjected to. He breathed a sigh of relief when they pulled into a lay-by close to where the police said the last traces of Helen Cutter had been found, the place they’d found her car on that day she disappeared.

"Now what?" Cutter asked, turning a cool gaze on Stephen.

Stephen shivered, telling himself it was just from the sudden cool breeze that had sprung up. "I don't know if anyone ever told you," he replied, doing his best to keep his tone serious and not allow any hint of teasing to seep through. Cutter certainly wasn't in the mood to be mocked by the man he'd come alone into the Forest with, the man he still obviously suspected might have been instrumental in his wife's disappearance. "I've done a lot of tracking in my conservation work. I know it's been almost a year since she disappeared, but there still might be some trace I can pick up."

Cutter gave what somehow managed to sound like a very Scottish snort. "Be my guest," he said, waving ahead. 

Taking the words as they were said rather than as they were possibly meant, as sarcasm, Stephen nodded and started checking the ground and the bushes for any traces of passage, the older the better. After a couple of hours casting around, Cutter was starting to get restive and Stephen was beginning to think he'd bitten off more than he could chew, when he heard something that wasn't a natural sound for the currently quiet forest. In fact, he suddenly realised that the forest had been unnaturally silent for the last few minutes.

Stopping suddenly as he caught a glimpse of an odd light in the clearing ahead, he grasped Cutter's arm and pulled him behind a large gorse, motioning for silence. Surprisingly, Cutter obeyed both unspoken orders, craning his neck to peer around the thorny growth. Stephen gasped and immediately strangled himself back into silence as the two men stared at the eerily glowing shards of light circling around a cloudlike centre that was shimmering in the middle of the clearing.

"What the hell is it?" Cutter whispered, his voice a bare thread of sound.

Stephen shook his head. "I don't know," he replied just as quietly, "but I'd be willing to bet you anything you want that Helen does."

"It looks like someone blew up the biggest diamond in the world and somehow held it there, half exploded," Cutter whispered in awe. "I need to get a closer look." 

He started to stand, and Stephen jerked him back again as the oddity gave off a few erratic pulses.

"Wait! There's something happening," Stephen said softly, and Cutter growled a little but obeyed.

Stephen nearly went into shock when Helen Cutter sauntered out from the middle of the thing, wearing rough clothing and looking tousled but perfectly healthy. Cutter moved as if he was going to stand and rush over to her, but Stephen silently pleaded with him not to, and he nodded, looking resigned. 

It was obvious to both men that Helen knew exactly what she was doing. Her clothes and accoutrements were completely different from what she'd been wearing the day she disappeared. And that meant that she’d been back from wherever that portal took her at least once and she hadn't even bothered to let her husband know she was still alive. 

She looked around carefully, and Stephen and Cutter remained perfectly still, knowing that any movement would catch her eye. Stephen also made sure not to look directly at her since she'd most likely feel his regard. The two men waited until she had moved off through the forest, luckily in a direction that wouldn't take her to the same lay-by as they were parked in.

Once she was out of sight and what he hoped would be earshot, too, Stephen stood slowly and walked carefully across the clearing to the thing hanging in the middle.

"Wow," he said softly, reaching out to swipe his hand through some of the glowing, circling shards. They were cool and made him shiver a bit as they washed over his hand. They looked sharp, but didn’t feel it. "I wonder where it leads?"

"I have no idea," Cutter responded. "But I intend to find out."

He stepped forward. 

Stephen narrowed his eyes and reached out to touch Cutter's arm. Had the thing fluttered and paled? "Wait a second, Professor, please. Something's happening."

Cutter spun on him, anger radiating from his entire body. "No fucking way. You stopped me from following her, so I'm going to at least find out where she's been!"

He turned back to what Stephen privately was referring to as the Portal, and took one step forward. Then he backed up quickly as the thing bulged, flickered, pulled itself inward and disappeared with a barely audible popping noise.

"Fuck," Cutter whispered. "Stephen, thank you. I hate to say it but I think I would have been chopped in half right now if you hadn't stopped me."

Stephen nodded, relief washing through him. "At least now we know what she found, and where she's been."

"Sort of," Cutter replied, staring longingly in the direction his wife had taken. "We know what she found, this, but no, we don’t know where she’s been."

Stephen sighed, then started rapidly backing away as he felt an odd tingling down his side. "Professor, I think it's coming back."

Cutter turned as a cloudy ball formed in the air then slowly and majestically expanded, rifts appearing along the smooth sides and separating into sharp shards that wafted apart as it circled. "Damn, that's incredible," the professor murmured, stepping forward again as it seemed to stabilise, even brighter than the other one had been.

Not reaching out physically again, Stephen made a suggestion with his fingers crossed. "Professor, we have supply packs in the truck. Why don't we go and get them, and if it's still here when we get back we can go through for a few minutes?"

Cutter eyed both him and the portal critically, to Stephen's eyes weighing the reason behind his request for delay against what suspicions he still seemed to be harbouring. "All right," Cutter said firmly. "But if it still looks this bright when we get back, we bloody well go through."

"Agreed," Stephen said, torn between excitement and trepidation as they headed for the car. Bloody hell. They were actually going to find out exactly what had happened to Helen Cutter a year ago.

TBC


End file.
